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Support for the Euro Is Seen in Dutch Election Results

AMSTERDAM — In a closely watched election, Dutch voters appeared Wednesday to give Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his center-right Liberal party a narrow victory over the center-left Labor party, which will bring a sigh of relief to European allies anxious about rising euro skepticism in the richer countries of the north.

Up to 40 percent of voters were estimated to be undecided until the end, weary of politicians in the fifth election in 10 years and nervous about their own well-being during an economic recession in the euro zone. But they appeared to settle on the two mainstream parties, rejecting more extreme calls for the Dutch to abandon the euro.

According to normally reliable exit polls, Mr. Rutte’s party won 41 seats out of the 150 at stake, and Labor, led by a fresh-faced leader, Diederik Samsom, won 40. That would make a governing coalition of the two parties possible, but negotiations will be difficult.

Mr. Rutte has called Labor “dangerous” and has taken a harder line toward further help for troubled euro zone countries like Greece than Mr. Samsom. Mr. Rutte has also pushed more private-market solutions for health care and social benefits than Mr. Samsom.

But even out of government, Labor has supported Mr. Rutte’s departing coalition on crucial European votes, and both parties believe firmly in remaining inside the 27-nation European Union and preserving the euro as a common currency among the 17 member nations that use it.

But Mr. Rutte is also seen as a firm ally of Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and her focus on budget-cutting and fiscal discipline as the answer to the euro’s problems. He has been tough on giving more time to Greece and is a strong opponent of further moves toward European federalism or political unity.

Photo

A voter on Wednesday in Marle in the Westhoff family’s living room, the smallest polling station for the Dutch general elections.Credit
Vincent Jannink/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

According to the exit poll by Ipsos Synovate, the Liberals took 41 seats, up from the 31 in the last vote in 2010. Labor won 40 seats, up from 30.

The harder-left Socialist Party, which took a strongly euro-skeptic stance, came third with 15 seats, followed by Geert Wilders’s anti-immigrant Freedom Party, which campaigned for the Dutch to exit the European Union and won 13 seats. But Mr. Wilders’s party lost 11 seats from what it holds in the current Parliament.

Mr. Rutte had to depend on Mr. Wilders’s support in Parliament to preserve the last government, which fell when Mr. Wilders refused to support budget cuts to reach a deficit of 3 percent of gross domestic product, as mandated by the European Union. Mr. Wilders was heavily criticized for irresponsibility in bringing the government down and appeared to have been punished by the voters for it.

The Christian Democrats, which once governed, continued their collapse, losing another 8 seats, leaving them with 13. The pro-Europe centrist D66 Party won 2 more seats, ending up with a total of 12, the poll said.

The weak showing of the Socialists made it less likely that Labor could form a majority coalition with them, even adding D66 to the mix. But it is possible that D66 will be part of the final coalition that results from party negotiations, which traditionally take weeks.

Ideally any coalition would also have a majority in the upper house, so a three or four-party coalition may be the final result, with both D66 and the Christian Democrats asked to join.

Final results are expected early Thursday morning.

A version of this article appears in print on September 13, 2012, on page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Support for the Euro Is Seen in Dutch Election Results. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe